There are many shelters to choose from today. No longer need they be formally placed on the axis of the principal room of the house and have surroundings planted with overwhelming dignity, as in the past. Then the effect was impressive and beautiful but hardly invitingly cosy. Today's shelters are placed where they are needed and are usually casual and informal. Sometimes shelters will be found at the end of the garden, sometimes attached to the house, and sometimes freestanding along one side of the garden border-in fact, they will be placed wherever they are found to be most useful. They are practical, then, built for use as well as beauty. That is, perhaps, the outstanding thing about today's shelters that is universal.

Some of them bring a certain architectural significance to an ordinary development house, extending its lines and making it look larger, while giving it a distinctive appearance which divorces it from the factory- made appearance of its fellows on the street.

Sometimes the shelters are solidly roofed; sometimes they have crossbars for a roof (the so-called "egg crate" style); and sometimes they are roofed with laths or trellis slats, with sunbreakers of snow-fencing, or bamboo shades which can be rolled up in the autumn and stored indoors or in the garage during those months when light and warmth in the house are needed. Increasingly, however, you will find shelters becoming half-and-half structures-partly roofed and partly open or covered with sunbreakers. This will provide shelter from sudden storms under the roofed part, while the sunbreaker or open part will be pleasant for those who like the sun, either tempered a bit or full strength. Or it may be that the terrace paving will extend out beyond the structure of the shelter so that it is possible to move furniture into the sun when that is desirable and to pull it quickly under the sunbreaker or solid shelter when protection is wanted.